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Exploring Technology and Tomorrow’s In-Person Social Experiences

Here at Sequence, we pride ourselves on staying up-to-date on consumers’ wants and desires, especially when it comes to connected experiences. Our most recent exploration into consumer trends looks at people’s digital gaming behaviors and how they are — or aren’t — satiating people’s desires for that person-to-person connection.

In today’s world, it has become a social norm to be as (if not more) engaged and connected to our online communities than to the people we come across in the real world. Still, no matter how many hours we spend investing ourselves in virtual realities and tapping away on screens, we crave real-life connections with other human beings, and rely upon interpersonal relations. The juxtaposition of these two types of social fulfillment piqued our curiosities, so we conducted a survey with more than 2,000 consumers to learn more.

The findings reinforced some assumptions we had as well as illuminated new food for thought. We found that the majority of people appreciate and seek out games that connect them to others in a meaningful way; in fact, two out of three consumers wish that more digital games were designed to bring friends and family together.

Designing these types of connected experiences involves shifting the consumer mindset around the role of digital games as they relate to our social lives. Up until now, we haven’t really thought of digital games as an effective way to bring people together. However, our survey found:

47% of consumers say they play games in small groups

46% of consumers play digital games with friends and family because it’s part of a social gathering

39% of consumers play digital games with friends and family at home

We also found that millennials are leading the charge towards digital togetherness. In fact, our survey found that 81 percent of millennials want digital games to do more to merge their passion for digital games with their natural desire to spend time with their friends and family.

Despite the assumption that this generation is “heads down” in their digital devices, they crave the opportunity to merge their digital interactions with in-person interactions. This survey — and the overwhelming success of games like Pokémon Go, for example — point to a widely untapped potential in creating more experiences that make social connection the main priority. Gameplay can be a proxy for other social experiences that have moved online – fundamental interactions like learning, entertaining or communicating.

This desire for real-life social connection represents a significant opportunity for game developers, but also for consumer brands that are extending their reach through second-screen experiences like games and other forms of digital entertainment.Download the full survey, “Tomorrow’s In-Person Experiences” to learn more. You can also learn more about other Sequence studies at Sequence.com/perspectives.